What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is a 1940 American live-action/animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and released by RKO Pictures. The second Disney animated feature film (after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), and widely considered to be one of the greatest films in cinema history, it is the best-known and most commercially successful adaptation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Directed primarily by Victor Fleming (who left production to take over the troubled production of Gone with the Wind) and Charles M. Jones, the film stars Shirley Temple (in her last major success as a child star) as Dorothy Gale, alongside the voices of Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton as the animated Oz characters. Legendary for its use of Technicolor, addition of a live-action character in an animated world, fantasy storytelling, musical score and memorable characters, the film has become an icon of American popular culture and was considered as one of Disney's greatest animated classics. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but lost to Gone with the Wind, also directed by Victor Fleming. It did win in two other categories: Best Original Song for "Over the Rainbow" and Best Original Score by Herbert Stothart. While the film was considered a critical success upon release in August 1940, it failed to make a profit for Disney until the 1949 re-release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,777,000 budget, not including promotional costs, which made it Disney's most expensive production at that time. The 1956 television broadcast premiere of the film on the CBS network reintroduced the film to the public; watching it became an annual tradition and, according to the Library of Congress, it is the most seen film in movie history. It was among the first 25 films that inaugurated the National Film Registry list in 1989. It is also one of the few films on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. The film is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14. The Wizard of Oz is the source of many quotes referenced in contemporary popular culture. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but uncredited contributions were made by others. The songs were written by Edgar "Yip" Harburg (lyrics) and Harold Arlen (music). The musical score and the incidental music were composed by Stothart. Plot The film starts in sepia-toned Kansas. 6-years-old Dorothy Gale lives with her dog Toto on the farm of her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Dorothy gets in trouble with a mean neighbor, Miss Gulch, when Toto bites her. However, Dorothy's family and the farmhands are all too busy to pay attention to her. Miss Gulch arrives with permission from the sheriff to have Toto euthanized. She takes him away, but he escapes and returns to Dorothy, who then decides to run away from home. They meet Professor Marvel, a phony but kindly fortune teller, who realizes Dorothy has run away and tricks her via his crystal ball into believing that Aunt Em is ill so that she must return home. She races home just as a powerful tornado strikes. Unable to get into her family's storm cellar, she seeks safety in her bedroom. A wind-blown window sash hits her in the head, knocking her out. She begins dreaming. The house is picked up and sent spinning in the air by the twister. Inside the storm outside the window, she awakens and sees an animated elderly lady in a chair, several animated farm animals, two animated men rowing a boat, and Miss Gulch (still pedaling her bicycle), who transforms into an animated cackling witch flying on a broomstick. The farmhouse crashes in Munchkinland in the animated Land of Oz, where the film changes to Technicolor. Glinda the Good Witch of the North and the Munchkins welcome her as their heroine, as the house has landed on and killed the Wicked Witch of the East, leaving only her stocking feet exposed. The Witch's sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, arrives to claim her sister's ruby slippers, but Glinda transports them onto Dorothy's feet first. The Wicked Witch of the West swears revenge on Dorothy for her sister's death. Glinda tells Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, where the Wizard of Oz might be able to help her get back home. On her way, Dorothy meets and befriends an Scarecrow, who wants a brain, a Tin Man, who desires a heart, and an Cowardly Lion, who is in need of courage. Dorothy invites each of them to accompany her. After encountering the Witch, who attempts to stop them, they finally reach the Emerald City. Inside, after being initially rejected, they are permitted to see the Wizard (who appears as a large head surrounded by fire). He agrees to grant their wishes when they bring him the Witch of the West's broomstick. On their journey to the Witch's castle, the group passes through the Haunted Forest, while the Witch views their progress through a crystal ball. She sends her winged monkeys to ambush the four; they capture Dorothy and Toto. At the castle, the Witch receives a magical shock when she tries to get the slippers off Dorothy, then remembers that Dorothy must first be killed. Toto escapes and leads her friends to the castle. After ambushing three guards, they march inside wearing the stolen uniforms and free her, but the Witch and her guards chase them across the battlements and finally surround them. When the Witch sets fire to the Scarecrow, Dorothy puts out the flames with a bucket of water; the Witch is splashed and melts away. The guards rejoice that she is dead and give Dorothy the charred broomstick in gratitude. Back at the Emerald City, the Wizard delays granting their requests. Then Toto pulls back a curtain and exposes the "Wizard" as a normal middle-aged man who has been projecting the fearsome image; he denies Dorothy's accusation that he is a bad man, but admits to being a humbug. He then gives the Scarecrow a diploma, the Lion a medal, and the Tin Man a ticking heart-shaped watch, granting their wishes and convincing them that they have received what they sought. He then prepares to launch his hot air balloon to take Dorothy home, but Toto chases a cat, Dorothy follows, and the balloon leaves without them. Glinda arrives and tells her that she can still return home by tapping her heels together three times and repeating, "There's no place like home". After bidding a tearful goodbye to her friends, Dorothy taps her heels together and awakens from her dream, surrounded by her family, the farmhands, Professor Marvel, and Toto. Cast Production Music Release Reception Differences from the novel Several significant changes were made to the story told in Baum's original novel when making The Wizard of Oz. Many details within the plot are omitted or altered, while many of the situations and perils that Dorothy encountered and experienced in the novel are not at all mentioned nor seen in the feature film. The Land of Oz and Dorothy's time there are all real in the book, not just an elaborate dream caused from unconsciousness. According to Baum, Oz is just an undiscovered continent that is hidden and surrounded by a harsh desert (officially called the Deadly Desert in later Oz books) that is much too dangerous to successfully cross, thus keeping the realm and its inhabitants safe from global discovery and unwanted invasion. In the book, on Dorothy's first night in Oz, she and Toto attend a lavish banquet at the local estate of a wealthy Munchkin man named Boq who is celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the East with his closest friends and five fiddlers. In the movie, a celebration is thrown upon Dorothy's arrival, but with all the Munchkin citizens of Munchkinland instead. In the book, the Tin Man (mostly referred to as the Tin Woodman by Baum) has a rather tragic backstory, while in the movie, his backstory is never revealed in detail. The characters of the Good Witch of the North (who has no name in the book), Glinda the Good Witch of the South, and the Queen of the Field Mice who helps to rescue the Cowardly Lion from the deadly poppies are merged into one omniscient character, instead: Glinda the Good Witch of the North, who saves the entire group from the Wicked Witch's curse on the poppies, while the original Witch of the North and the Mouse Queen's roles are eliminated. To take advantage of the new vivid Technicolor process, Walt Disney had decided than Dorothy's charmed Silver Shoes would be changed changed to magic ruby slippers for the movie. Due to time constraints, a number of incidents from the book—such as encountering the flesh-eating Kalidah beast while halfway on the yellow brick road; the adventures that take place towards the end of the novel while traveling in the country of the southern Quadlings; the enclave of Dainty China Country; the hill of the Hammer-Heads; and the Cowardly Lion officially becoming the King of the beasts after killing a giant, monstrous spider terrorizing the animals of the forest—were completely cut from the script. Also in the novel, upon arriving to the Emerald City, Dorothy and her companions are forced to wear green-tinted spectacles by the Guardian of the Gates before entering to protect their eyes from being blinded by the brightness and glory of the city's beauty and brilliance. The wizard also appears to each member of Dorothy's group separately in different forms each day and asks each of them individually to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, whereas in the movie he appears to them all at the same time as a giant, green head levitating above a throne (only one of the many forms he took in the book) and asks them to bring back the Wicked Witch's broomstick to prove themselves worthy of his assistance regarding their request. The role of the Wicked Witch of the West was also enlarged for the movie (in the book, although she is mentioned several times before, she is only present for one chapter in the exact middle of the book). This was done to provide more dramatic tension throughout the film, and to unify what is otherwise a very episodic plot. When the Wicked Witch of the West's character is introduced, no mention is made of her having greenish skin or owning a crystal ball. Instead, she has only one eye, yet Baum says it is as powerful as a telescope, enabling the witch to see what was happening all throughout her western kingdom in Oz's Winkie Country. Trivia